CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The last to enter the crew capsule on July 16, 1969, Buzz Aldrin paused to take in the rising sun and the waves rolling in to Cape Canaveral.

"It was an awesome moment, getting in the spacecraft," Aldrin remembered yesterday, 40 years after he, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on the first mission to land men on the moon. "It was a moment I wanted to remember."

The world yesterday remembered Apollo 11's historic launch, which began a journey that culminated in Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" on July 20, 1969.

Hundreds gathered yesterday at the Kennedy Space Center's visitor complex to tour Apollo exhibits and hear Aldrin, 79, and seven other Apollo-era astronauts share recollections of their missions.

The astronauts received a loud ovation as they took their seats near the first stage of a mammoth Saturn V rocket like the one flown on Apollo 11.

"It's an impressive piece of machinery, as you can see," Aldrin said during a discussion moderated by CNN's John Zarrella. "It's historic and maybe a little unnerving when you climb on top of that thing."

PULLING IT OFF

The ride into space was smooth, Aldrin told reporters before the public event.

"The three of us felt that all of a sudden, no longer were we bolted to the ground, but we felt a little bit of a swaying," he said.

On July 20, 1969, as Armstrong and Aldrin neared the end of a dicey lunar module descent with fuel running low, the mood in Houston was quiet and tense.

"The tension was really mounting in Mission Control, and literally, we were holding our breath when we heard, 'Contact. Engine stop,' " said Charlie Duke, 73, the mission's capsule communicator and later an Apollo 16 moonwalker. "A great feeling to pull it off."

Bruce McCandless, who was assigned to communicate with Armstrong and Aldrin during their moonwalk, drove home during a planned rest period to find his wife shooing him back to work — the first men to land on another celestial body hadn't been able to sleep, so Armstrong would take his first step early.

McCandless, 72, drove back to work with a view of the moon and experienced a strange feeling of disconnection.

"I could see the moon, and it didn't look any different than the way it had any other night," he said. "And yet I knew that folks that I knew, Neil and Buzz, were up there on it and shortly would be walking on it, and I was going to be talking to them. I just couldn't get over this almost feeling of science fiction."

Other former astronauts participating in the discussion yesterday were Vance Brand, Jerry Carr, Walt Cunningham, Edgar Mitchell and Al Worden.

Several times, the astronauts thanked dozens of people in the audience who worked on the Apollo program, prompting more rousing cheers.

"The people who made it possible are sitting out there," said Worden, 77, who circled the moon in the Apollo 15 command module.

THE FAME

Alec and Maryla Dorling set their visit from Sweden with their son to coincide with the 40th anniversary.

They consider the Apollo astronauts to be heroes.

"It was a monster achievement," said Alec Dorling, 58.

Some of the astronauts described the life-changing experience of seeing Earth distant in space, but Aldrin — who famously described the moon's "magnificent desolation" — said the biggest change came with his celebrity status when he returned home.

"Even before I went to the moon, I was dreading the aftermath of being a celebrity on a pedestal, giving speeches and all that," said Aldrin, who has detailed struggles with alcohol and depression in a new book.

"It clearly ended up being a far more challenging thing for me to come back from a very structured life, and then try and find my way afterward."